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Get to know us better! Gain valuable insights into how we think by visiting our blog, or take a look at the industry events we're frequenting on our events page. You can also geek out with us by attending one of our security management webinars, or dive head first into the products and solutions we provide in our Resource Library. There's lots to keep you busy!

Getting to Know Security Manager 7.0

Nov 05, 2013Josh Mayfield

FireMon recently released version 7 of our flagship Security Manager Suite, including the latest edition of the add-on Change Management Solution, Policy Planner. Over the next couple of weeks, we will highlight some of the key features of version 7.0. A major focus of this release was enabling security organizations to continuously and in real-time assess the effectiveness of their security. In today’s security environment, the confluence of constant change and an ever evolving threat landscape make it almost impossible for any practitioner to effectively answer what the state of their network security is at any given time, and whether or not they are effectively and successfully protecting said network. Security Manager 7.0 automates the continuous, real-time monitoring of your network and the key elements that affect the state of your security posture: the technology, the people and the processes used to implement security.

A key feature in the 7.0 release that enables continuous real-time monitoring are Controls. Controls consist of an onboard library of more than 100 pre-configured checks that allow customers to engage in assessment faster than ever before and thereby generate powerful visibility and actionable intelligence regarding current access control, policy enforcement, problematic configurations and necessary risk mitigation in their network. Controls include industry audit standards such as PCI and NERC, as well as a number of security and device vendor best practices garnered from years of experience working with customers and technology vendors. In addition to the pre-configured controls that ship with Security Manager, the 7.0 release adds the ability for users to build custom controls to meet the unique needs of each specific network environment. A user could create a customized control that captures all of the requirements of their specific network security policy and ensure that all device configurations within their network conform to their specific company security policy. Controls are also fully integrated with Policy Planner in 7.0, ensuring that all new rules or configuration changes are proactively analyzed before they are implemented to ensure that making a change to a network or security device does not fall outside of the corporate security policy or place a company out of compliance with any standards they are required to maintain. All of these controls can be easily understood in the 7.0 interface via an array of high-level device and group dashboards that provide quick access to critical metrics of managed devices, highlight changing conditions and allow for critical trending of ongoing improvements. As our CTO highlighted yesterday, continually assessing the security controls defined and measuring the results over time creates a framework to measure security operations.

Controls are just one of many exciting new features available in Security Manager 7.0. We encourage you to evaluate Security Manager today, and begin your journey towards Better Security through Better Management.

Events

Webinars

Traditional security models are all about the current state – but in the current state of cyber-security, by the time new rules are written, they’re obsolete. Resources have changed, topologies have shifted, traffic has evolved, and applications grew new arms and legs.

Most organizations that I talk to still have their networks designed for 90's era attacks. A hard perimeter and little to nothing on the inside. The one common exception is the part of the network that processes credit card data since PCI DSS specifically identifies the Cardholder Data Network (CDN) and requires controls around it.

Join David Monahan, managing research director at leading IT analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), and discover the difference between organizations using an SPOA solution to manage their firewall environments versus those not using one of these solutions.

Using Security Policy And Automation (SPOA) Tools To Reduce The Attack Surface

Attack surfaces have expanded greatly in the past several years, in part because of the amount of new applications coming online via Internet of Things and increasingly connected technology. Organizations have an admittedly tough time keeping up with all the new touchpoints and the rapid expansion of the attack surface. Complete defense is nearly impossible, and many companies struggle with visibility issues, mismatched or misaligned firewall policies, and an inability to comprehensively test the security configurations they do have

Cloud technology gives enterprises faster application deployment, instant storage, workload versatility and pricing models that decrease initial capital investment. It is no wonder enterprises are making the move to the cloud.

Migrations run the risk of cost overrun, delays and disruption of network service - often due to a lack of personnel and process to efficiently and effectively manage. To ensure a successful migration, consider these four key factors: 1) identifying and removing technical mistakes, 2) removing unused access, 3) refining and organizing what remains and 4) continuous, real-time monitoring.

Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) continues to be a difficult practice for organizations the world over. In the last 20 years, network security policies (e.g. firewall rules) have grown by more than 3,500%. Yes, you read that number correctly. Why is that?

Gartner research has uncovered a number of security policy challenges for enterprises. Among these challenges are the typical assessments necessary to fortify policy for compliance and improved security posture.

Welcome to the world of overflowing regulations and compliance standards, of evolving infrastructure and the ever-present breach. It's a world where 72% of security and compliance personnel say their jobs are more difficult today than just two years ago.

Firewall technology has come a long way since its initial, most rudimentary forms. Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) are the latest development, and organizations are accelerating adoption to the new technology. But NGFWs aren’t a fix-all solution.

Forrester’s Zero Trust Model of information security helps teams develop robust prevention, detection and incident response capabilities to protect their company's vital digital business ecosystem. This report will help security pros understand the technologies best suited to empowering and extending their Zero Trust initiatives and will detail how Forrester sees this model and framework growing and evolving.

The customer sought a data analysis tool to correlate application data with network and security data to spot service-impacting anomalies. They did not have an accurate picture of interoperability between applications and the underlying infrastructure.

This national insurance provider had three problems to tackle regarding their firewall policies. First, the number of rules under management was overwhelming staff and processes. They needed to increase visibility and effectiveness of their firewall change request/workflow ticketing process. And they also need help maintaining compliance PCI DSS requirements.

Each time this Global MSP engaged a new customer, they had to onboard the firewalls – sometimes hundreds per engagement – into their network. Part of the onboarding process required assessing the policies against internal best practices – a manual, line-by-line process that took an average of 16 hours/firewall and was extremely error-prone.